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Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

In Great Wyrley, a small village in the depths of Edwardian Staffordshire, a dead rabbit is found skewered to the vicarage lawn with a garden fork. Bodies of blackbirds are left in a milk churn and a soup tureen. Three broken eggs are laid out on the front step. Anonymous letters — obscene, misspelled, sometimes rabid with religious mania — slither through the letter box. Gallons of black paint and slurries of coal are disconcertingly delivered. In the local paper, advertisements announce that the vicar is running a matrimonial agency, is selling horse manure and will dispatch specimens of ladies’ corsetry on demand. When cattle in the vicinity are viciously slashed, things take an even more macabre turn. Soon the press is clamouring about The Great Wyrley Outrages. It sounds like a case for Sherlock Holmes. And, indeed, the sleuth who eventually sets